The Strangeness of In Dahomey
The Strangeness of In Dahomey
“In ‘epileptic’ dancing these coloured people are, as was to be expected, quite unrivalled. But in repose, and in their ball dresses, they give one an even stranger sensation...Their spectacle is just a little painful – painful and strange.”
So wrote the drama correspondent for the Times reviewing the Williams & Walker touring collective’s performance of In Dahomey on the 23rd of October 1903. Dahomey was a French colony, released from colonial rule by that Empire at the very turn of the new century; it is now the Republic of Benin. In Dahomey was the most economically and critically successful of all the turn of the century black theatricals, but it was anchored by notions of the ‘Uplift’ of a race, subversion of imperialistic display, and diasporic identities in flux. Its main plot was the repatriation and reclamation of an African Kingdom by a pair of ex-enslaved African Americans. The pair in question were George Walker and Bert Williams who had met and suffered through the pain of performing as ‘authentic Africans’ in various colonial displays and exhibitions.
This paper discusses the pain and subversion this popular entertainment brought to both British audiences and the touring artists performing to them, in a two-way cathartic dance of resistance. In this, the stage was very much a mediated cultural contact zone with a thick veneer of double-consciousness weaved into its theatrical ‘third wall’. In Dahomey provided a set of visually familiar narratives in which the audience expectancy was to gawk at colonised territory. But the fancy dress, the repatriation, the ‘uplifted’ identities of the black men and women on stage, all combined to unnerve them. It was ‘strange’, unfamiliar and challenging – something the company did not anticipate, but probably welcomed.
Race, Popular Performance, African americans, Radicalism, Double-Consciousness, Transatlantic
Millette, Holly-Gale
909906ff-426b-47ab-a71a-5788ea36c213
Millette, Holly-Gale
909906ff-426b-47ab-a71a-5788ea36c213
Millette, Holly-Gale
(2012)
The Strangeness of In Dahomey.
Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage, The Storey, University of Central Lancashire, Lancashire, United Kingdom.
11 - 14 Jul 2012.
(Submitted)
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
“In ‘epileptic’ dancing these coloured people are, as was to be expected, quite unrivalled. But in repose, and in their ball dresses, they give one an even stranger sensation...Their spectacle is just a little painful – painful and strange.”
So wrote the drama correspondent for the Times reviewing the Williams & Walker touring collective’s performance of In Dahomey on the 23rd of October 1903. Dahomey was a French colony, released from colonial rule by that Empire at the very turn of the new century; it is now the Republic of Benin. In Dahomey was the most economically and critically successful of all the turn of the century black theatricals, but it was anchored by notions of the ‘Uplift’ of a race, subversion of imperialistic display, and diasporic identities in flux. Its main plot was the repatriation and reclamation of an African Kingdom by a pair of ex-enslaved African Americans. The pair in question were George Walker and Bert Williams who had met and suffered through the pain of performing as ‘authentic Africans’ in various colonial displays and exhibitions.
This paper discusses the pain and subversion this popular entertainment brought to both British audiences and the touring artists performing to them, in a two-way cathartic dance of resistance. In this, the stage was very much a mediated cultural contact zone with a thick veneer of double-consciousness weaved into its theatrical ‘third wall’. In Dahomey provided a set of visually familiar narratives in which the audience expectancy was to gawk at colonised territory. But the fancy dress, the repatriation, the ‘uplifted’ identities of the black men and women on stage, all combined to unnerve them. It was ‘strange’, unfamiliar and challenging – something the company did not anticipate, but probably welcomed.
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Submitted date: 14 July 2012
Venue - Dates:
Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage, The Storey, University of Central Lancashire, Lancashire, United Kingdom, 2012-07-11 - 2012-07-14
Keywords:
Race, Popular Performance, African americans, Radicalism, Double-Consciousness, Transatlantic
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Local EPrints ID: 467998
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/467998
PURE UUID: 5c0d43e1-39d6-48c2-a298-66fc54e0fc3f
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Date deposited: 27 Jul 2022 17:00
Last modified: 28 Jul 2022 01:46
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